Immigration to Israel:
Vietnamese Boat People in
Israel

by Naomi Scheinerman

In April 1975, North Vietnamese
totalitarian communists defeated the South
Vietnam regime and the United States army.
Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese secretly
fled South Vietnam to escape communist persecution
and torture. Many escaped in small, unreliable
boats and faced harsh weather and threats
from pirates as they were turned away by
neighboring local authorities. More and more
Vietnamese began escaping.

On June 10, 1977,
an Israeli cargo ship en route to Japan crossed
paths with a boat full of 66 Vietnamese. They
were out of food and water, were extremely
lost and scared, and their boat was leaking.
Their SOS signals had gone ignored by passing
East German, Norwegian, Japanese, and Panamanian boats. The Israeli captain and crew immediately
offered food and water and decided to bring
the passengers on board and transported them
to Israel.

Once in Israel, Prime Minister Menachem
Begin authorized the Vietnamese boat people with Israeli citizenship,
comparing their situation to the plight of
Jewish refugees seeking a haven during the Holocaust. Between 1977 and 1979, Israel welcomed over three
hundred Vietnamese refugees.

The documentary The Journey of Vaan
Nguyen made by Israeli film director Duki
Dror follows Hanmoi Nguyen,
one of the original refugees, as he lives
in Israel and returns to his town in Vietnam.
A writer and restaurant worker, he finds
himself suspended between two civilizations,
without being fully at home in either one.